by Bec McMaster
“At first light. I’ll wake you at dawn,” he promises, turning toward the door. “Be ready.”
He’s halfway through when I can’t bear it anymore. This odd sense of tension looms between us, and I don’t know how to break it.
“Wait.”
He pauses there, glancing back. “Yes?”
My heart starts racing. “I owe you a kiss.”
“I thought you needed time.”
I don’t think time’s going to make any difference to the mess of confusion in my head, but maybe this will.
I close the distance between us and, pressing a hand to his chest, stretch up on my toes. “Are you declining my offer?”
Thiago’s eyelids hood his eyes, his breath whispering over my mouth. “Never.”
“Thank you.” I whisper the words against his lips. “For listening to me about this leanabh an dàn.”
And then I lean into the kiss.
His mouth softens beneath mine, dangerously carnal in its allure.
It’s a different kiss than the one we shared when I nearly set the bed on fire. This one is soft with longing, and I can feel the anger in him softening, all his harsh edges easing as he leans into me.
The heat of his mouth is becoming familiar. More so when his hand slides down my spine and cups my ass aggressively. The action grinds me against him, and I break the kiss with a gasp.
It’s more than I expected.
And the look in his eyes says he’d like to throw me over his shoulder and slam me down on the bed if he could.
Or against a wall, where I could wrap my legs around his hips.
Or maybe those are just my thoughts, tempted by the solid heat of this male and the promise in his eyes. Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.
This time, there’s a smile on his lips when he sees the effect he has on me.
“Sweet dreams, Princess,” he says, lifting my hand to his mouth and brushing a kiss there, his eyes shining with feral intensity.
He’s picturing it too.
I know it.
I curl my hand into a fist. Thalia suggested I simply enjoy what he’s offering, but some part of me can’t help feeling as though, if I make that decision, I’ll send the pair of us hurtling to a final, desperate conclusion.
25
The next day, Thiago leads me to the chambers that house the Hallow. It’s in the second-tallest tower of the palace, overlooking the sprawl of city below.
I peer through the arched windows, hungry for the sight of his city. Golden Ceres is known as the City of the Dawn, and with its rough-hewn sandstone, golden banners, and gleaming blue rooves, it looks it. The sea glistens in the distance, and gulls wheel through the air. It teems with life, a stark contrast to Valerian.
“This is the political center of Evernight,” the prince muses, resting a hand on the arch at my side, his body caging me in the open window. “Though I often feel more at home in Valerian despite the snows and the wraiths.”
“You feel like you belong in your City of the Dead?” It’s a strange confession to make.
He glances toward me, the sharp lines of his cheekbones giving him a feral sort of beauty. There’s an untamed wildness to his features that’s both alluring and unnerving. I can’t help feeling as though he’d shed this skin if he could, with all its courtly trappings, and reveal the real man beneath.
“Ceres was built by my queen,” Thiago says softly, turning his gaze back to the city. “Those golden banners aren’t mine. If you look closely, you’ll see the rising dawn emblem upon them.”
My gaze returns to them, understanding exactly what he’s not saying.
This city may belong to him, but some of the fae here will never accept him.
“Some of the city folk call me ‘abomination’ when they think I can’t hear them.” His voice drops to a soft croon. “Sometimes I walk the city in a cloak of illusions, and I hear them talk of the old days when the queen ruled. Of her legitimate sons. Prince Emyr was a monster, and Prince Arawn no warrior, but to hear the fae speak of it, both were heroes. They forget the day Emyr had forty craftsmen strung up for protesting the new taxes. They ignore the little girl he rode over when she didn’t move out of his way fast enough. Everywhere he went, he filled the ground with coffins and the streets with blood. His mother despaired of ever breaking him of his arrogance and cruelty, but she merely sent him to different posts in the hopes he’d stop. That’s the monster they call the True Heir.”
“History often softens the stark reality of the truth.”
“And I’m an impure bastard who murdered the rightful heirs and stole their mother’s throne.” This time, his smile holds edges. “When Emyr was a golden-haired warrior with a smile that could light up a room.”
“I think your Emyr would have made a wonderful consort for my mother.” I wrinkle my nose. “It’s always the blonds.”
“You bear a grudge? It wouldn’t have anything to do with your very blond mother and sister, would it?”
He’s caught me out.
“All my life I hated my hair,” I admit. While Andraste looked like a perfect little replica of Mother, I was the ugly, dark cuckoo in the nest. “I paid a travelling peddler forty gold pieces when I was twelve to chant a spell that would strip the color from it.”
“What happened?”
“The color faded and the peddler moved on. I was delighted. Until I woke the next morning to find my hair had fallen out. It was all over my pillow, and my mother was furious at my stupidity.” She’d ordered me shaved bald, and I was locked in my rooms, with only a nurse for company, until it grew back. “If it’s any consolation, I find myself partial to green eyes and dark hair.”
Thiago’s gaze darts to mine. “Do you?”
The tension in his shoulders softens as I press my back into the stone of the arch, turning my entire body toward him. “Do you think I’d stand in an open arch with my enemy behind me if I wasn’t bedazzled by his pretty eyes?”
“I thought we were past the ‘enemies’ part of this?”
“I’m still considering the notion. I don’t know what comes after ‘enemies.’”
“That’s easy.” His voice grows rough. “We kiss. We argue. We fall into bed. We fuck.”
My cheeks heat. I’d wondered if he’d mention that.
Thiago brings his hand to my cheek, brushing his knuckles against the smooth skin there. “But you’re the one who makes that decision. I won’t steal into your bed, Vi. You’re the one who’s going to have to do that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You only just woke to the truth; you’re entitled to feel confused about it all.” He gives a sly smile. “And for every day you make me wait, I’ll repay you with an hour of sensual torture.”
Help.
I stare at him breathlessly. “Doesn’t that behoove me to make you wait longer?”
Thiago leans closer, stealing a soft kiss from my lips. “That depends.” He takes a step back, finally giving me some space to breathe. “On whether your willpower is stronger than temptation.”
It’s not.
I know it’s not.
I want to throw up the white flag of surrender right here, to taste more of that kiss he barely gave me.
And some part of it must show on my face, because he draws back and laughs. “Willpower, Vi.”
It’s a smoky sound that curls inside me, as though he’s somehow infected me.
“I’m trying to remember why this is a bad idea.”
“Oh, it’s not. It’s a very, very good idea,” he croons. “But we’re supposed to arrive in Stormhaven within the hour, and an hour’s not long enough to do any of what I have planned.”
I close my eyes. Images dance there, of the pair of us tangled together on heated sheets. “That isn’t helping.”
Thiago chuckles under his breath. “It wasn’t supposed to. Come. Kyrian will be waiting for us.”
I can’t help watching him as he strides toward the center of the Hall
ow. Thiago wears power like a mantle, but there’s a hint of old wounds showing beneath his careful words.
I wondered why he surrounded himself with the misfits and outcasts like Eris and Baylor. In my mother’s court, they would have been shunned and despised, regardless of their powers.
Now I know.
Because he’s an outcast himself. Even here, in the city he rules, they know him as the enemy.
Thiago activates the Hallow.
It’s unusual to have one here, inside a building. They’re usually found in mossy forests or atop old barrows. The stones that guard them like silent sentinels are still here, though the columns line the circular room.
“Ready?” Thiago asks, reaching out to take my hand.
For the Prince of Tides? Never. But I nod anyway.
Thiago gave me two weeks to help find this leanabh an dàn. I’m not going to let one of my mother’s worst enemies bar me from helping.
Thirteen Hallows were created to lock the Old Ones away, but once their other use as portals was discovered, more were created. Not merely prisons, but means of transport between kingdoms.
This is not an origin Hallow.
It’s clear this was built after the wars.
The world flashes past in a shimmer of green as the glyphs light up, and then my stomach starts to turn.
There’s an odd hum within the portal. “Is that supposed to be doing that?”
Thiago frowns.
Power washes over us. Not so much like a soothing tide, as usual, but a raging sea. It sends me spinning, tumbling through a vortex of magic unlike anything I’ve ever known.
Waves of pure magic crash over me, drenching me in its warm liquid gush.
We’re thrown forward, tossed about like jetsam caught in the barrel roll of a wave. I lose Thiago’s hand, tumbling endlessly, endlessly—
This isn’t normal.
It’s never felt like this before.
A hand plucks at my hair, and then a woman appears before me, crafted almost singularly of seafoam. Green seaweed forms her hair, and her brows are dark and frowning over fierce eyes. “You are not welcome here, miatha lin.”
She bares sharp teeth at me, lunging toward my throat.
I scream as her teeth sink into my tender flesh and punch her directly in the side of the face. It’s enough to tear her loose long enough to break free. And then I’m spinning again, churned about like clothes in a copper wash pot. Salt water washes up my nose and down my throat, until it’s all I can taste.
The portal spits me out on a rocky shore, coughing and gagging on seawater.
I’m still fighting, trying to wrestle my way free, only to discover the firm hands locked on my shoulders belong to Thiago.
“Vi!”
I spit out a mouthful of salt, only to find his fingers have captured my chin and he’s tilting my face to the side. I slap it away, but he holds up bloodied fingers.
“What happened?” he demands.
The prince, as usual, looks like he just sauntered out of a bedroom. No sign of wet clothes, only slightly tousled hair. I’m sure I look like a drowned sailor.
“Did you see her?” I gasp, scraping bedraggled hair out of my face.
He offers me a hand. “See who? And what happened to you? Why are you wet?”
I tell him about the woman who tried to drown me, but his eyebrows merely draw together in a frown. “That’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible?”
He glances at the jagged stones that stand on the rocky beach like solitary sentinels. “She sounds like one of the saltkissed, but they were banished along with the Father of Storms.”
The saltkissed.
“But they’re trapped.” I look around. “Here. They were trapped here.”
I know enough of my history to know where each of the Old Ones was trapped. The Father of Storms made his final stand on this beach before being lured between the standing stones.
Thiago presses his hand against the nearest stone. The tattoos on his throat writhe, so I know he’s using his power, but nothing else manifests.
He shakes his head and lowers his hand. “I can’t sense anything, but this is troubling. The portals take us into the World Between Worlds for the brief moments it takes for us to travel. If one of the saltkissed managed to manifest there, it might mean the prison walls are weakening.”
“Do you think this has anything to do with Angharad?”
“I don’t know.”
We stare at each other.
There are a few too many troubling details coming to light of late. It can’t be coincidence.
First, Angharad starts toying with Mistmere. Then we hear whispers that a child of one of the Old Ones might be walking the world. And now, the Hallow on Stormhaven Isle is reacting weirdly.
I reach out to touch one of the stones and hear the hiss of the saltkissed woman in my ears.
Yanking my hand back, I swallow hard.
“What did you feel?” Thiago’s at my side in an instant, his callused hands capturing mine.
“I heard her again. It’s as though… the Veil between both worlds is thin here. And she’s waiting on the other side for me.”
“Why you?” He searches my face.
“She called me miatha lin.”
Instantly, he frowns. “It’s the language they spoke on this world before we arrived. The language of the Old Ones. ‘Promise of one,’ I think. I haven’t spoken it in several hundred years. Perhaps Kyrian will have a better grasp than I do. He loves to lock himself away up there with his library and his brandies.”
I stare at the stony cliffs that shear into the blue skies. Fierce, winged drakon soar through the skies and hover at cave mouths in the cliffs above us. They distract me for a second, but I’m not here for the fauna.
“What if there’s something wrong with the Hallows?”
It’s a question neither of us have dared broach.
Thiago’s eyes darken. “Then we pray and hope that Maia hears us.”
Stormhaven rests on a rocky crag overlooking the Innesmuch Sea. Though I’ve heard of it, I’ve never been here before.
Unless… I have.
That’s a disconcerting thought.
The lord of the Kingdom of Stormlight has never been on good terms with my mother. Though really, who is?
And while Queen Adaia and Thiago might be bitter enemies, the enmity between her and Prince Kyrian is the stuff of legends. It’s said that he loved a maid of the sea once, only to lose her when the oceans called her home. My mother had her minstrel compose a song about it to mock him, and Lord Kyrian sent her the minstrel’s tongue and fingers in a box.
“Are you sure I should be here?” I’m not looking forward to it.
“Don’t worry,” Thiago drawls. “He doesn’t bite.”
I stare at the long, stone staircase that wends its way up the cliff face. “Do we have to…?”
“Yes.” Thiago flashes me a smile. “Consider it your exercise for the day.”
“You seem remarkably cheerful.” I look at those stairs again. I can already feel my thighs groaning. Curse it.
“Here,” he says, setting foot upon them. “I’ll even go first, so you can stare at my ass the whole way.”
“How very thoughtful of you.”
I set myself to the climb. As suspected, it’s brutal and merciless and I hate the prince more and more with each step. “This isn’t helping your cause,” I mutter as we near the top. Or at least, I hope it’s the top. Every corner we turn, my hopes fade when I see another rise. “Why couldn’t Kyrian have installed lifting platforms? I’ve seen them at Greycliffes. They’re marvelous devices.”
“Because,” calls a voice rich with melody, “it amuses me to see my visitors huffing and puffing up my stairs. Especially if they’re enemies. It takes a bit of the fight out of them.”
I follow Thiago around the next curve of the cliff, and the stairs finally flatten out into an expansive balcony overlooking the seas.
Stone sea serpents wend their way along the edge, forming a natural rail. I swear their polished brass eyes watch me as I pass between them.
“Thiago.” There’s a tall, lean fae male waiting there, clad in leather from top to toe and wearing a pirate’s swagger. He flashes a dangerous smile as he clasps Thiago’s hand and claps him on the back. “It’s been a long time, my old friend.”
“Not long enough, you bastard. I remember now why I don’t visit more often.”
Seeing the two of them standing together is either a woman’s best fantasy, or a gift from the Old Ones.
Kyrian’s dark eyes flicker to me, his smile thinning a little. “Princess Iskvien, you’re as beautiful as the stars say you are.”
“Are you on speaking terms with them?”
“Every night,” he purrs. “Haven’t you heard me whisper in your dreams?”
“One can hardly compete with the stars,” I mutter. He’s not what I expected, at all. Nor is he the man haunting my dreams.
“Don’t make me throw you off this cliff,” Thiago says. “Vi’s not the only one who had to climb those fucking stairs.”
“If the rumors are true, you wouldn’t have had to.”
“What rumors?” I ask.
Thiago’s brows darken. “Ignore him. He’s been sniffing the sea breeze for too long. Empties his head.”
Kyrian throws back his head and laughs.
There’s a certain sense of earthy rawness to the sound, as if the sea has given him a raspy undertone. Though his face is formed of near perfection—those lips a little too full, and his lashes a little too long—there’s also something feral about it. Not for him a court full of polished courtiers and bowing sycophants, I suspect. No, he looks like he’d be just as comfortable on the swaying deck of a ship as sitting on a throne. Comfortable anywhere he stood, even if it was a prison cell.
I wish I felt the same sense of confidence.
“Come this way,” Kyrian calls, turning and striding toward the stone arches that seem to lead directly into a castle hewn into the rock. “I’ve had my servants send for refreshments. You seem as though you need them.”
Kyrian sinks onto the enormous carved stone throne in the middle of his audience hall, kicking his legs over one arm and snapping his fingers for wine. “So tell me, to what do I owe the pleasure?”